Terry's Blog

Do We Get All Our Vitamins and Minerals From the Food We Eat?

Hardly, that’s like a pie in the sky. But doctors still continue to tell patients that you don’t need to take vitamins or minerals, just eat a healthy diet. What consumer knows what a healthy diet is today? The average American today consumes a diet which is 70% carbohydrates and sugar. 55% of the 70% comes from wheat, a genetically modified grain that has been engineered to increase the content of the protein (gluten and gliadin) and yield per acre. Gluten is a protein that is indigestible by 90% of humans. The result of consuming gluten causes a thickening and hardening of the lining of the intestinal tract causing malabsorption.

The foods we should consume that would constitute part of a healthy diet are no longer as healthy as 100 years ago. All our foods are being grown genetically modified to create pest resiliency, higher yields and various other manufacturer benefits which do not include increased nutrition. The apples that are grown today are all genetically modified and tweaked to prevent browning. A recent study discovered that we would have to eat 150 apples today to obtain the same amount of vitamin C that one apple provided in the 1950s before genetically engineered foods were the rage. Top experts researching magnesium, a mineral, found that 90% of Americans were deficient. I think it’s very important to supplement the diet with a good quality multivitamin and mineral supplement. For example, pregnant women don’t get enough iodine.

A new study published in Sweden finds that pregnant women in that country were 35% below recommended iodine levels. These results were similar to another study in the U.S. for pregnant women. Pregnant women require 50% more iodine than non-pregnant women. The primary need is to support the mother’s thyroid gland and is essential for developing the baby’s brain and thyroid. Iodine deficiency during pregnancy has been associated with children who then have poor vocabulary scores and lower IQs than children born to mothers who have an adequate iodine level. Don’t rely on salt for your iodine intake. Researchers found that salt is not an adequate source of iodine. It evaporates over a period of time long before the amount of salt purchased is consumed.